The best free deck design tool in 2026 is the Simpson Strong-Tie Deck Planner if you care about the structure, and Decks.com Deck Designer if you want permit plans and a materials list out of the same session. Both are free, both run in a browser, and both give you something you can hand to a builder. Every other tool on this list is better at one specific thing — composite colour, whole-yard layout, seeing the deck against a photo of your own house.
What follows is all ten, compared on the thing that actually matters: what you walk away with. A pretty 3D render is easy. A materials list, a framing plan and a drawing a permit office will look at is not. We have checked each tool against the vendor’s own page for 2026 — several of them moved or changed since last year.
Quick answer: which free deck design tool should you use?
| If you want to… | Use |
|---|---|
| Get the framing and connections right | Simpson Strong-Tie Deck Planner |
| Print permit plans and a spec sheet | Decks.com Deck Designer |
| Compare composite board colours | Trex Deck Designer or Fiberon |
| Design the deck against a photo of your house | MiTek Deck Designer |
| Get a shape and a rough number in ten minutes | Lowe’s Deck Designer |
| Plan the whole backyard, not just the deck | Planner 5D |
| Model something no template covers | SketchUp Free (personal use only) |
1. Simpson Strong-Tie Deck Planner
If you only use one free tool, use this one. Simpson Strong-Tie makes the connectors that hold decks together, so their free planner is the only one on this list built around the structure rather than the surface. When you finish a design it produces a full bill of materials — lumber, decking, railing and hardware — and it highlights the critical connections that actually keep the deck standing.
- Bill of materials including the connectors and fasteners, not just the boards
- Flags the critical connections most DIY plans get wrong
- Printable permit submittal pages and materials list
- Desktop or laptop browser only — it will not run on a phone
Best for: Anyone who wants the framing right, and anyone heading to a permit counter.
2. Decks.com Deck Designer
The closest thing to a complete free planning workflow. You create a free account, design in the browser, and come away with permit plans, build specifications and a materials list at no cost. It handles multiple levels, stairs and railings, and shows the result in 3D and in flat 2D views.
- Free account required, then everything is free
- Multi-level decks, stairs, railings, composite board selection
- Downloadable permit plans, specs and material list
- Framing is fixed — joists and beams are locked to 2x10s, and railings cannot be removed
Best for: DIY homeowners who want a plan on paper without paying for anything.
3. Trex Deck Designer
The best-looking free designer for composite, and the one most homeowners in Metro Vancouver end up in because Trex is what they have already been shown. It handles L-shapes, T-shapes, bump-outs and cut corners, and it lets you drop in the walls and structures that are already there — which most free tools will not do. Output includes a budget, a drawing you can take to permitting, and a shopping list.
- Real deck shapes: L, T, bump-outs, cut corners, existing walls
- Colour and material comparison across the Trex range
- Budget figure, permit drawing and materials list
- Two companions worth knowing: the Trex Railing Designer and the Trex AR visualizer, which drops a deck into your actual yard through your phone camera
- Desktop only for the main designer
Best for: Composite decks, and anyone who wants to compare board colours honestly.
4. TimberTech 3D Deck Designer
TimberTech’s designer covers more of the deck than most: decking, railing, lighting and framing all in one model. Its most useful feature is that you can save several versions and compare them side by side, which is how the decision actually gets made in most households.
- Decking, railing, lighting and framing in one model
- Save multiple designs and compare them side by side
- Downloadable take-off list of materials
- Start from a template in the inspiration gallery or build from scratch
Best for: Homeowners weighing two or three versions of the same deck.
5. Fiberon Deck Designer
Fiberon actually gives you three free tools. The Deck Designer builds a full 3D model from scratch or from a pre-built deck, with a time-of-day setting and different landscape backdrops, and it produces a bill of materials. The Outdoor Living Visualizer is the quick one — change the house colour, mix and match boards and railing. The Discovery AR app puts the product on your real deck surface through your phone.
- 3D model with a bill of materials
- Time-of-day lighting and landscape backdrops — genuinely useful for judging colour
- Separate quick visualizer for colour matching against your house
- AR app for seeing boards on your actual deck
- Desktop browser for the full designer
Best for: Getting the colour right before you commit to 400+ square feet of it.
6. MiTek Deck Designer
MiTek’s free cloud-based designer has one feature the others do not: you can import a photo of your house and design the deck against it. For anyone trying to picture how a deck sits under a specific set of patio doors, that is worth more than another 3D render on a blank lawn. There is a Canadian site as well as a US one.
- Import a photo of your house and design around it
- Multi-level decks, plank direction, sizing and colour
- Complete materials list, and designs can be saved, printed, emailed or exported
- Canadian version at mitek.ca
Best for: Seeing the deck against your actual house instead of a stock lawn.
7. Lowe’s Deck Designer
The lowest-friction tool on the list. It runs in a browser, needs no account to start, and combines drag-and-drop layout with 3D, measurements, an itemised materials and tools list and a cost estimator. The catch is that the estimate is priced against Lowe’s, so treat the number as a materials baseline rather than a project budget.
- No account needed to start
- Drag-and-drop layout with 3D and measurements
- Itemised materials and tools list you can share with a contractor
- Built-in cost estimator — materials only, priced against one retailer
Best for: A fast first pass when you just want a shape and a rough number.
8. Home Depot Deck Designer
Home Depot’s designer works the same way as Lowe’s and has the same strength and the same limitation: the materials list is generated against Home Depot’s own inventory. That makes it excellent for a shopping run and unreliable as a true cost of the finished deck, because it prices boards, not labour, footings, permits or waterproofing.
- Step-by-step planning flow with pre-set templates
- Auto-generated materials list priced against store inventory
- Good for a shopping list, not for a project budget
Best for: DIY builds where you are buying the lumber yourself.
9. Planner 5D
Planner 5D is not a deck tool, it is a whole-property design tool, and that is the reason to use it. If the deck is part of a bigger plan — patio, landscaping, hot tub, the route from the kitchen to the yard — this is the only tool here that will model all of it together. Be clear about the free tier though: it is genuinely limited.
- Designs the whole outdoor space, not just the deck
- Works across desktop and mobile
- Free tier gives you roughly half the furnishing catalogue
- Free renders are watermarked and lower quality; the AI design generator and full catalogue are paid
- No materials list or permit output
Best for: Planning the deck as part of the whole backyard.
10. SketchUp Free
SketchUp is the most capable modeller on this list by a wide margin and the least convenient. Nothing about it is deck-specific — you are drawing every joist yourself. Worth knowing in 2026: SketchUp Free still exists as a browser-based modeller, but it is personal, non-commercial use only, it comes with no support, and it no longer appears alongside the paid plans on SketchUp’s own pricing page. If you are a contractor, the free tier is not licensed for your work.
- Full 3D modelling in the browser, 10 GB of cloud storage
- Access to the 3D Warehouse model library
- Personal, non-commercial use only — no commercial licence
- No support, no AI features, and no offline use
- Steep learning curve and no deck-specific components
Best for: Experienced modellers designing something no template covers.
Free deck design tools compared
The same ten tools side by side. "Permit output" means the tool produces a drawing or specification set intended to be submitted — not that your municipality will accept it without review.
| Tool | Cost | 3D view | Materials list | Permit output |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simpson Strong-Tie Deck Planner | Free | Yes | Yes — incl. hardware | Permit submittal pages |
| Decks.com Deck Designer | Free (account) | Yes | Yes | Permit plans + specs |
| Trex Deck Designer | Free | Yes | Yes | Drawing for permitting |
| TimberTech 3D Deck Designer | Free | Yes | Yes — take-off list | No |
| Fiberon Deck Designer | Free | Yes + AR | Yes | No |
| MiTek Deck Designer | Free | Yes | Yes | No |
| Lowe’s Deck Designer | Free | Yes | Yes | No |
| Home Depot Deck Designer | Free | Yes | Yes — store priced | No |
| Planner 5D | Free tier (limited) | Yes | No | No |
| SketchUp Free | Free (personal only) | Yes | No | No |
What changed in deck design tools between 2025 and 2026
If you read a version of this list last year, four things are different:
- Trex and TimberTech both moved their designers. Older articles link to URLs that now return a 404. The links in this article are current as of September 2026.
- Augmented reality is standard now. Trex and Fiberon both ship phone apps that put real product on your real deck. For choosing a colour this beats any render, because it shows the board under your light, next to your siding.
- AI yard visualisers arrived. Upload a photo of your backyard, get a finished deck drawn onto it in seconds. Genuinely useful for showing a partner what you mean. Useless for dimensions, framing or cost — there is no structure behind the picture.
- SketchUp Free is quieter than it was. It still exists and it is still free, but it is personal and non-commercial only, it has no support, and it is no longer listed with the paid plans. Contractors are not licensed to use the free tier.
Can a free deck designer give you permit-ready plans?
Partly. Decks.com and Simpson Strong-Tie both produce printable plan sets and material lists intended for a permit submission, and for a simple ground-level deck that is often enough. What none of them do is check your specific site. Footing depth depends on your soil. Load depends on your climate. Attachment depends on how your house wall is built. Those are the three things a permit reviewer looks at hardest, and no free tool knows any of them.
In Metro Vancouver the practical rule is: a low, freestanding, simple deck may pass on a tool-generated plan set. An elevated deck, a deck attached to the house, or a deck over living space will need more. We wrote up what each municipality actually asks for — Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey and Delta.
What free deck design tools cannot tell you about building in BC
This is the honest part, and it is the reason we wrote this article rather than just linking to a list. Every tool above is made by a company that sells decking. They are very good at the surface and they are silent on everything underneath it. Here is what gets left out on a Lower Mainland deck:
- What is already under there. On a rebuild, the tool draws a new deck on a clean slate. Reality is a ledger board that has been taking water for fifteen years. Half the projects we quote turn out to be structural, not cosmetic — the signs are in our guide to deck repair in Vancouver.
- Water. Nothing in a design tool models a rainscreen wall or how a ledger is flashed into it. In this climate that detail decides whether the deck lasts twenty years or rots the wall behind it. Where the deck sits over living space you are not building a deck at all, you are building a roof — see vinyl waterproofing.
- Guards. Under the BC Building Code a guardrail is required once a walking surface is more than 600mm above the ground below, and the framing has to be able to carry the load that guard is required to resist. Design tools will happily draw a railing onto a rim joist that cannot hold it. More on that in our deck railing guide.
- Slope and access. Every one of these tools assumes a flat, reachable yard. A lot of Metro Vancouver lots are neither — building on a slope changes the footings, the post heights and the price.
- Cost. A retailer estimator prices boards. It does not price demolition, disposal, footings, permits, waterproofing, lighting, structural repair or labour. What a real quote contains is itemised here, and current Metro Vancouver ranges are in our deck cost guide.
None of that makes the tools a waste of time. It makes them step one. Design in the tool, then get the structure checked by someone who has opened up a hundred of these.
From design to a deck you can actually build
A workable order of operations, using the free tools for what they are good at:
- Size it first. Decide the footprint before you open anything — what size deck do I need walks through it by furniture and use, not by square feet.
- Pick the material. The tool will show you colours, not durability. Composite vs wood in BC and cedar vs pressure treated cover how each holds up in this climate.
- Design it. Simpson Strong-Tie for structure, Trex or TimberTech for the look.
- Export everything. Save the 3D view, the plan and the materials list.
- Get it priced against reality. Send the export to a builder who will look at your footings, your wall and your slope before quoting — how to choose a deck builder in Metro Vancouver covers what to verify and what to ask.
VS Deck & Rail builds composite, wood and vinyl decks and custom railings across Metro Vancouver — Vancouver, North Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, Coquitlam and Delta. Bring us the file you exported from any of the tools above and we will tell you what it will actually take to build it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best free deck design tool in 2026?
For most homeowners it is the Simpson Strong-Tie Deck Planner, because it is the only free tool built around the deck’s structure and it outputs a bill of materials that includes the connectors and fasteners. If you want permit plans and build specifications in the same session, use Decks.com Deck Designer. If you are set on composite and want to compare board colours properly, use the Trex Deck Designer.
Are free deck design tools actually free?
The manufacturer and retailer tools — Simpson Strong-Tie, Trex, TimberTech, Fiberon, MiTek, Lowe’s, Home Depot and Decks.com — are genuinely free, because their purpose is to sell you materials. Some require a free account. Planner 5D is freemium, with watermarked renders and roughly half the catalogue on the free tier. SketchUp Free is free for personal, non-commercial use only.
Can a free deck design tool produce permit-ready plans?
It can produce a permit submittal drawing, which is not the same thing. Decks.com and Simpson Strong-Tie both output plans and specifications you can print and take to a counter. Whether your municipality accepts them depends on your deck’s height, its attachment to the house, your soil and footing conditions, and local requirements. Assume a permit set will need engineering input where the deck is elevated, attached to the house, or over occupied space.
Do these tools work for decks in British Columbia?
They work for layout, materials and appearance. They do not account for BC conditions: rain and snow loading in the Lower Mainland, footing depth for local soil, guardrail requirements that begin once a walking surface is more than 600mm above the ground below, or how a ledger is flashed into a rainscreen wall assembly. Design in the tool, then check the structure separately.
Does a free tool’s cost estimate reflect what a deck really costs?
No. Retailer estimators price the materials on their own shelves. They do not include demolition, disposal, footings, permits, waterproofing, electrical, structural repairs to what is underneath, or labour. On most Metro Vancouver projects the materials are the smaller half of the invoice.
Is there anything new in deck design tools for 2026?
Two things. Augmented reality has become standard — Trex and Fiberon both let you point a phone at your existing deck or yard and see the product in place, which is far more useful for choosing a colour than a render on a screen. And AI visualisers that redraw a photo of your yard as a finished deck have arrived. They are good for mood and terrible for dimensions; treat their output as a picture, not a plan.
